Stop being a martyr.

[yintherapy]

How do you know when you're taking on the role of martyr in your relationships? Anyone have experiences/suggestions for outgrowing it?

[cylon]

martyr

Not many details there.

[Xanafax]

To outgrow the role you have to put your own happiness first.

[yintherapy]

Originally Posted by Xanafax

To outgrow the role you have to put your own happiness first.

Easier said than done. Many martyrs are made happy by seeing other people happy, then they get caught up in that form of happiness.

[RT Wolf]

What you're doing, woudl you suggest to someone else do the same thing? IMO, that's the test of whether you're treating yourself fairly or whether you'r being too self-sacrificial.

Think of yourself as just another person and you happen to have control and this person is more likely to listen to your recommendations. So, you tell this person to stay at work overtime for your boss rather than go home to enjoy his/her life, is that fair to you?

It takes a bit of a trick to not treat youreslf so...personally and be a bit more detached from yourself enough to treat yourself fairly. If you have a propensity for self-sacrifice, why do you believe there is a limited amount of whatever? Have you tried finding win/win solutions rather than lose/win solutions?

Most people treat themselves quite poorly. The best thing I've got as an antidote is not to treat yourself as yourself, but to treat yourself as a different person that you care about and genuinely want to do good for. Treat them like a loved one. You want your loved ones to have fun, too, and to enjoy themselves, but you also want them to work, etc.

Keep in mind, the martyr game is a tricky one, if that's what you're playing. If you're just being too sacrificial and putting others needs ahead of your own (why are you doing that? you're both people, equal as far as I'm concerned), then that's not relaly the martyr game. That's prolly a different game.

[yintherapy]

I'll give an example from my own life. With my ex-boyfriend, I moved cross-country to live with him while he was going to grad school. He was living off of loans, and I ended up paying most of our living expenses because I was working full-time. I knew what I was getting into, and I thought that once he graduated, he'd be all fired up to get a job so we could both be breadwinners. But once he graduated, his own insecurities held him back, and he wasn't as motivated as I would've been in his shoes. He never ended up finding a job (for over a year) and he didn't even get a full-time retail job just so he could help with the bills, because he always though a "real" job was just around the corner.

I felt cheated, like he wasn't keeping up his end of the bargain. I felt like I lost a lot, and sacrificed a lot, to "invest" in him and the relationship. Was I being a martyr? Were my expectations fair?

[RT Wolf]

You invested in a relationship and it turned out badly. That happens. The very fact that you're having doubts, though, suggests that that wasn't the case. Either it's becoming a pattern, or it's happened more than once. So, lemme ask some leading questions:

Why did you keep supporting him even after he graduated? Are you sure you didn't just give him a safe place to make excuses and get away with it? What's the difference between an excuse and a reason? Give me something you consider a "reason" and i'll give you a success story where someone didn't accept those as reasons. Are insecurities a reason or an excuse?

A professor of mine told us a story about the two ways mothers handle children who don't wnat to do something because they're afraid. One kind of mothers say, "it's ok. you don't have to do it because you're afraid" and then they hug them. The second kind say, "yea, I know you're scared. Do it anyway." And they push them out. Guess which one of the above kids learns that they're bigger than their fears and which one learns that fear means stop and that they can't overcome their fears. On the one hand, the mother pushed the child into an emotionally upsetting situation, but the child learned something very, very important. The other mother saved the child from being upset, but robbed it of what is necessary to grow up. So, are you absolutely sure you didn't empower his weaknesses and let him get away with it?

[yintherapy]

There was no shortage of tough love...I definitely made demands and set deadlines, but the very fact that I had to push him like that was a testament to his passivity. I discovered that he was the kind of person who expected things to fall into place for him, for them to not be that difficult, and he saw himself as a victim of his circumstances. When I saw that, I began "the process" of breaking up.

I'm in a similar situation now where I'm dating someone who's in school, and probably will be for the next two years or so, but his personality is very assertive. Still, I don't want history to repeat itself. At about the same time I broke up with my ex, I also stopped being a martyr for my family members. Since then I've been pretty paranoid about not falling into that role again.

[magi13]

Originally Posted by yintherapy

How do you know when you're taking on the role of martyr in your relationships? Anyone have experiences/suggestions for outgrowing it?

if you don't want to be a martyr "someone who does self sacrifice for the other over one's own choice, needs or wants"

you have to be shelfish i mean selfish hehe.

that does not work in a relationship and will end up badly especially if you choose to go for a long term relationship.

50 =50 does not equal to one

it's 60= 60 ^^, put a little effort on both sides of the party.

[RT Wolf]

Oh I see. I call that proactive, the way Covey uses it in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Some people just aren't very proactive and they don't take full responsibility for their lives. They give up their responsibility for their lives upto chance or other people nad blame them when things don't go like they expect.

Anyhoo, it sounds like you've got a lot straightened out. I'd be careful of being too paranoid, though, because that may lead to not sacrificing anything ever for fear of being taken advantage or whatever.

In response to your original question, I don't know much beyond what I've said. If you'd recommend another person to do the same thing if the roles were switched around, then I'd say you're acting pretty fairly. If, instead, you'd say, "no, I'll sacrifice this but others can't." then you're probably being too self-sacrificial.